Was the culprit Krueger, Tamby or under-performing players?

The prospects for the Edmonton Oilers in 2013-14 have much to do with what exactly went wrong in 2013, when the team disappointed itself and its fans by going sideways.

If the problem with the Oilers last year was poor strategies employed by former head coach Ralph Krueger — and this is something of a trendy explanation right now — perhaps the Oilers are in for a big boost by fixing up their defensive zone and neutral zone play, as asst. coach Steve Smith said is about to happen.

Of course, Smith was part of last season’s coaching staff, which came up with such seemingly weak strategies in the first place.

Ralph Krueger (Photo: Dale MacMillan/Getty Images)

If, on the other hand, the problem was GM Steve Tambellini and his so-called dithering ways, maybe that’s been solved by replacing Tambellini with new GM Craig MacTavish. Tambellini was blasted last year for failing to address the Oilers depth at centre, which blew up on the team when Shawn Horcoff and Anton Lander went out with injury.

Of course, MacTavish is already being criticized right now over the same issue.

Steve Tambellini, formerly of Edmonton Oilers

If the problem was a handful of weak (Lennart Petrell, Mark Fistric) and/or deteriorating and/or injured players (Eric Belanger, Ryan Smyth, Ryan Jones, Eric Belanger, Horcoff, Nikolai Khabibulin, Ales Hemsky), then maybe that will be solved by getting rid of such players, or them having better health this year.

Of course, Smyth, Jones and Hemsky are all back, and the players brought in (Jesse Joensuu, Ryan Hamilton, Anton Belov, Boyd Gordon, Jason LaBarbera, Denis Grebeshkov, David Perron) may or may not be better than the ones who departed (Petrell, Magnus Paajarvi, Whitney, Petrell, Horcoff, Khabibulin).

Steve Smith delivers a message to Whitney

With all these issues in 2013, Edmonton improved a bit in the standings last season, but failed to get more shots or scoring chances or to give up less shots or scoring chances in their own end.

It’s hard to imagine the squad won’t be better this year, but it was hard to imagine that last season, and there’s no denying that that is exactly what happened, a massive fail to get better, save for the Oilers core group of young stars, Taylor Hall, Justin Schultz, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, Jordan Eberle and Nail Yakupov, who all had good years.

My own take is that it was a combination of all of the above that led to the team’s poor play in 2013, that a number of key pieces deteriorated fast (Belanger, Whitney, Jones, Smyth) and a few key pieces deteriorated a bit (Horcoff, Hemsky). At the same time, Krueger’s strategies and line combinations did seem off very often, while Tambellini needed to do more to solve the depth issue at centre ice early on in the season.

All three of these issues had a massive impact on the team, and if I had to pick one issue as being the main one, I’d lay the blame on Tambellini.

Uh, can I change that to Krueger?

No, having thought it through, the problem was clearly the games of so many players falling apart.

Ah, it was just a mess, the whole thing, a big, ugly mess, so it’s an encouraging thing that there’s been so much change on all fronts. It was broken and definitely needed fixing.

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